Internationalization of small and medium enterprises in India: Opportunities and challenges

Small and medium enterprises play a noticeable role in the development of Indian economy. There are approximate 26.1 million SMEs in India which contribute 45% of industrial output, 40% of exports, employing 60 million people, and produce more than 8000 quality products for the Indian and international markets. In today’s global economy SME’s are facing international challenges and to tackle them these challenges need to be converted into opportunities by Internationalizing SMEs, since internationalization provides opportunities to improve productivity and increase their chances of survival by diversifying the risk.

This paper focuses on challenges and opportunities before SME’s to go international. The objective is to look at the importance of developing and promoting SMEs in India to extend a competitive position in the international marketplace.

The economic situation of SMEs in India is studied then important challenges and opportunities are discussed with gap identification.

Several factors are identified which are important for SMEs to grow international with some studies indicating that internationalization is often accompanied by improved performance and competitiveness in SMEs.

This is descriptive research, with the limitation of 50 SMEs in Pune region, which can be further done for the states or the entire country.

With the use of advance ICT and improved infrastructure many opportunities may result. This paper describes ways for Indian SMEs to become competitive.

This paper puts effort on ways to convert challenges into opportunities for internationalizing Indian SMEs.